A close aide to Maguindanao Gov. Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu whose political challenge to the powerful Ampatuan clan led to the country’s worst political massacre has been shot dead, police yesterday said.
Police said they were investigating whether the shooting of Said Salik last Saturday was related to the 2009 massacre of 57 persons after a string of killings targeting witnesses to the murders.
Salik, 65, was grand children when he was shot by two men riding in tandem aboard a motorcycle in Mindanao, police said.
“The victim was a consultant to Gov. Toto Mangudadatu,” regional police spokesman Insp. Benjamin Mauricio said.
He added that the motive remained unclear, but stressed they were investigating whether it was related to the massacre.
Mangudadatu had challenged the powerful Ampatuan clan’s control of the southern province in Maguindanao, leading to the massacre in 2009 of 57 persons, including his wife, relatives and 32 journalists.
Mangudadatu’s wife was en route to the election body’s office to file her candidacy for governor accompanied by journalists and friends when they were seized by members of a private army controlled by the Ampatuans.
The Ampatuans had ruled Maguindanao for a decade, under the patronage of then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who used the clan’s private army as a buffer against Muslim guerrillas.
The Ampatuans saw Mangudadatu as a threat to the family’s power and ordered the massacre as a means to stop their rival’s political ambitions, prosecutors said.
The clan’s patriarch as well as several of his sons were among the 196 persons charged with conspiring to commit the murder, although police said more than 100 suspects remained at large.
As the trial goes through the notoriously slow court system, three witnesses to the crime have been murdered.
Three relatives of other witnesses have also been killed, in what rights groups said was a clear pattern to silence anyone who dared testify against the Ampatuan clan.
Malacañang, for its part, also yesterday reminded the Philippine National Police (PNP) that its standing orders were still to put behind bars all the 101 Maguindanao-massacre suspects.
Deputy presidential spokesman Abigail Valte, in a radio press briefing, said the President Aquino was still awaiting reports from the PNP who were told to locate the remaining suspects.
Earlier, PNP spokesman Senior Supt. Generoso Cerbo Jr. admitted that the PNP was having a hard time locating the remaining Maguindanao massacre suspects, citing the wide area where suspects were believed to be seeking refuge, the nature of its terrain and the presence extremist armed groups.